Shelby Steger (1906-1984)

Office Worker, Author
Born May 29, 1906, Alameda County, California
Died  September 23, 1984, Alameda County, California

Shelby Grove was born on May 29, 1906, in Alameda County, California. Her father, Olin Shelby Grove, was an architect. Her mother was Minnie (Guy) Grove. In 1930, Shelby was living in Oakland and working as an Ediphone operator. In 1940, she was a stenographer working in San Francisco.

Shelby Grove became Shelby Steger upon her marriage to Athol Bruce Steger, a native of St. Louis, Missouri, who worked in San Francisco as a printer. That is presumably where they met and presumably where they were married.

In 1945, the Stegers moved to the Missouri Ozarks so that she would have a peaceful place in which to write. They bought forty acres along the Current River near Van Buren, the seat of Carter County. There, next to Panther Spring and under a shade tree when the weather was good, she composed more than one hundred, possibly close to two hundred stories. Almost all of them were love stories sold to All-Love Stories, Fifteen Love Stories, Love Short Stories, Street & Smith's Love Story Magazine, Sweetheart Love Stories, Thrilling Love, and similar titles. Her lone detective story, "Manhunt!", published in Detective Tales in December 1949, was nationally syndicated in newspapers. Shelby Steger had one story in Weird Tales, "Stay with Me," in March 1950.

Shelby Steger also wrote a newspaper column called "Bear Camp Notes" or "Bear Camp Comments" for the Van Buren, Missouri, Current Local. Her observations on Ozark ways of speaking also went out to the nation's newspapers. Her years in Missouri, 1946 to 1956, seem to have been inclusive of her years as an author of pulp stories. Ace Books published her novel Desire in the Ozarks in 1957. She was a hardworking and dedicated writer, but after that, she seems to have written only small items published in Florida and California newspapers.

The Stegers moved to Tampa, Florida, in 1956. Athol B. Steger died there in mid 1974. Shelby Steger recrossed the country after that and died in the county of her birth on September 23, 1984. She was seventy-eight years old.

Shelby Steger's Story in Weird Tales
"Stay with Me." (Mar. 1952)

Further Reading
"Love Story Writer on Ozark Farm" by Vic Russell in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat Magazine, Sept. 7, 1952, page 14.

Desire in the Ozarks by Shelby Steger, published by Ace Books in 1957. I don't know the name of the cover artist.

Shelby Steger at work, from the article "Love Story Writer on Ozark Farm" by Vic Russell in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat Magazine, Sept. 7, 1952, page 14.

Text copyright 2022, 2023 Terence E. Hanley